I recently watched a documentary about a fellow who spends some time with children in an AIDS orphanage in India. One of the boys becomes very ill. His body becomes covered in sores and blisters that burst and stay open and seep and make him look like his skin is peeling away from his body. The doctors say the same thing is happening to the membranes and tissues inside of him as well. His lips look like God or the devil has taken a potato peeler to them. A compress is kept over his eyes, blinding him, in order to try and prevent infection from spreading there. He frequently spits or drools out blood and mucus and, I don’t know, the kind of fluid you think oozes from wounds.
He is in a lot of pain.
His name is Surya. He is about the same size as Charlie. Charlie, my son, Charlie, my beloved, Charlie my beautiful one whose hair smells like sunshine. Charlie who takes me by the hand and looks up into my eyes and tells me that I am beautiful and that I make his heart feel happy and then asks if he can sit on my lap and watch a movie with me. This Surya, he is also somebody’s son, it’s just his parents died, ya know? He is also beloved, it’s just that the people who love him aren’t wealthy or influential or connected, see? And I’m sure his hair also smells like the wind and childhood and earth and the wonder, and when the person who was with him got up to leave and use the bathroom, he also took him by the hand and, speaking for the first time in days, said, “No!” This Surya, this Charlie, this boy, this beloved child, he said “No!” because he was afraid that he would die in those moments when he was alone.
I watched all of this far away from where Suryas are too numerous to count. I watched it play out as a movie on a flat screen HDTV. And I cried awhile, and the gal who was with me, who loves me and whom I love, she cried awhile, too, and we held each other and later that night we made love and then the next morning the alarm went off on my smartphone (which, like most things I own, is made by children like Surya who live and die like Surya) and I went off to work and she went off to school.
And life went on.
And death did, too.
~
A year ago, I would have laughed at the idea of referring to sex as “making love”. Who talks that way? If sex was transcendental, it was simply because the nearly pure physicality of it could permit sad and lonely and broken and lost and angry and weary people — people like me — to momentarily forget all of these things. In sex, you can lose your self in touching and being touched, in giving and taking, in caressing, and in fucking. You can give yourself away, you can become absorbed in another — just as another can become absorbed in you — and in that forgetting you can also forget that this life doesn’t seem worth living. But, hell, all the reasons for dying seem like bullshit, too, and so, in this limbo between the living and the dead, there is, at least, la petite mort.
Funny just how much can change in a year.
~
In the documentary that featured Surya, the Charlie covered in sores, there was also a young girl who becomes very ill and comatose and is on the verge of dying. The father eventually tries to rush her to the hospital — he is sitting on the back of a motorbike, holding her in his arms — she is naked but for a blanket — and they get caught on the road waiting for a train to pass at a rail crossing. She dies then. We see her die — her head falls back, her mouth open, everything totally limp and the father cannot close her mouth. He takes her in his arms, the blanket falling from her body and turns and starts walking back into the night with her. “I am taking her home.”
What was her name? I don’t remember her name. But the film makers thought the scene was dramatic enough that they decided to include it twice — once at the beginning, without any subtitles or talking (what better hook for those of us far way watching this movie on HDTVs, right?), and once later one within the context of the story and with a voice over. I do remember this though: wrapped in a shroud, her body looked tiny, as did the grave they buried her in. When she was buried, she didn’t look any bigger than my Ruby, my beloved, my beautiful girl who isn’t afraid to say, “No!” to me when I tell her it is bath time, and who asks me to be a monster so she can sit me down and bring me presents in the closet, and who want to hold my head on her stomach when she is falling asleep. I watched the dad bury this little girl, I watched him weep and hit himself in the forehead when he looked at pictures of her, I watched him love his Ruby and lose her. Forever and ever and ever. And this is not uncommon. To cite just one, from any number of possible examples, around 2000 children under the age of five die every day from diarrhea-related disease. That’s two thousand Charlies and Rubies every day. That’s more than one every minute. Gone forever and ever and ever.
Welcome to the world we live in. Things don’t have to be this way. We all know that. It’s just that we haven’t wanted to love one another at least well enough to prevent the needless suffering and dying of children. And we never will. Things will always be this way with us. We know this, too.
~
Last weekend I went to my father’s wedding. I missed the first (wasn’t born then) and the second (wasn’t speaking with him then) but I made the third. It was a small ceremony in an old stone Anglican church with beautiful wood floors, and candles, and stained glass windows, and a pipe organ that I loved as much as all the other parts combined. Ruby thought we were in a castle, she thought the priest — who was wearing a white robe — was a ghost, and she thought the bride was a princess. She was pretty excited about the whole thing and stood on the pew the whole time so that she could “see the princess.” Charlie was a lot less excited about the actually ceremony but he played games on my phone and it kept him still and quiet.
And me? I don’t know what all I was feeling. Or maybe I do but I don’t think I can talk about the way it felt without, in that very act of talking (or writing), retroactively changing what happened. So I’ll say no more about that.
What a mess life is, eh? How often we hurt when we desire to help, how often we betray when we desire to love, how often we curse when we desire to bless. It is very hard to know what we are doing, regardless of what our intentions are.
And how often we get bogged down in our own wounds, our own cuts and scars and insecurities, and never see anything beyond ourselves. Even now — I watched a movie and I feel things about characters therein by comparing them to my own children, whom I will continue to love in practical ways (just as I will continue to ignore or oppress the Suryas and the girls whose names I forget in practical ways), so, really, am I even seeing anything beyond myself here?
~
After I watched this documentary, I wanted to be more kind. I wanted to never be angry at another person again. I just wanted to love… and be loved, too. I’m weary of anger and frustration and pettiness and violence, violence, violence everywhere. But, you know, after I went to work the next morning somebody was rude to the fellow who helps me out and makes coffee in the Resource Centre I supervise and so I decided to be rude back to the fellow who disrespected my helper. I didn’t say anything rude in words — but in my tone and in my body language, I basically told the fellow that he could fuck off and I didn’t give a shit about anything he might have to say about that. Then, that night, Charlie and Ruby were refusing to go to sleep and I felt frustrated, even after reflecting upon Surya and the girl whose name I forgot, even after thinking how I failed that fellow at my work, even after recognizing these things in the midst of feeling frustrated… I still felt frustrated and, after sternly telling the kids to be quiet and go to bed, I went to another room and dropped a number of whispered eff bombs as I washed the dishes (in an overly aggressive manner… fucking dishes).
Do I ever learn anything at all? Woe to me if I can watch a documentary like that and go on unchanged and unchanging.
~
…
~
But I will tell you a secret. A very exciting one. One wholly unanticipated. One I stopped believing in a long, long time ago. Are you ready? This is the secret:
I have already begun to change.
Ain’t that something? Because I was dead but I am now alive. And that breaking process, that slow inexorable shattering that drained me of my insides and filled me up with darkness inside? It wasn’t the final word. My pieces are coming together again. But I am not going back to being who I was before. I am being made new. I, too, have experienced the resurrection of the dead. Here and now, I have been born again — this time from the dead.
This is what love has done with me. How about that, eh? I wouldn’t trade this love for anything in the world. Not that I could trade it even if (for some unimaginably absurd reason) I wanted to do so. This love after all, is something I am in, not something I produce. It is more an event and an environment than a choice. At least for me. Perhaps the one who loves me, who introduced me to this love in which we are now situated, perhaps for her it was a choice. For me it was not. The dead don’t make choices. They’re simply dead. I could not choose myself back alive. I could not heal myself. My heart felt as though it had been broken into pieces, and the pieces had been burned, and then the charred remains had been wrapped all around with barbed wire. But when she first laid her head on my shoulder, when she first held my hand, when she first said to me, “I love you,” everything changed and the wires were cut and the ashes were swept away and the pieces came back together and, just like the motherfucking Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day… and it hasn’t stopped growing since. I’ve got a long way to go yet, my hair still stinks like the grave and I’m a bit of a mess and sometimes old feelings or reactions still surface, but a resurrection is more like an insurrection than a makeover. It takes times but, baby, it runs all the way up and all the way down and the fruit that it bears are a lot longer lasting than a tan and botox injections.
~
And the girl, the Ruby who died? Her name is Vembadi. I will not forget it again. She died but our time with her has not ended. Because we know her story now. We are responsible for it and we our responsible for ourselves and how we will live in light of it.
Whether or not this proves to be a responsibility we can handle will be determined, I think, by whether or not we are in love.
What the Elephants Remember: A Fable
Some cold and flu germs only live for a few minutes.
The mayfly has a life expectancy ranging from half an hour up until a maximum of twenty-four hours.
Our skin cells live, on average, two to four weeks.
Some octopuses live six months. Others, up to five years.
In 2010, the worldwide average life expectancy for homo sapiens was 67.2 years, although, currently, where I live, it is closer to 80 years.
Some species of turtle can live between 150-250 years.
Some pine trees can live over 5000 years. Some sponges are thought to be more than 10,000 years old.
Tirritopsis nutricula is a species of jellyfish that is immortal — it will live as long as the ocean will sustain it.
Our sun is estimated to be 5 billion years old and is expected to live another 5 billion years before it dies.
The universe, although harder to calculate, may be somewhere around 13.75 +/- 0.1 gigayears old. I’m not sure how much older it’s supposed to live before it doesn’t anymore.
How can all these “things” co-exist? How can we inhabit a space together? Isn’t that amazing?
~
What is the measure of a life? The mayfly is born, reproduces, and dies in a day or less. Does it experience angst? Does the pine tree? Do we want them to?
Does the sun feel the same about us as we feel about our skin cells?
Does a cold germ feel about itself the same as we feel about ourselves?
Does a 10,000 year old sponge look at the brevity of our lives and wonder if, between being born, reproducing, and dying, we ever find time to ask bigger questions about meaning and beauty and truth?
~
Does the length of time that one lives determine the kind of meaning one finds in life?
Elephants have the same lifespan as we do. Do elephants think the same as we do? They, too, bury their dead. They mourn the loss of loved ones with tears streaming down their faces. Their children play. They like to shower.
Why are they not like us? Why have they not developed civilizations and cities and guns? We do they let us slaughter them?
Is it because they were wise enough to not put the men in charge?
Or is it because they’ve decided that they do not want to be like us? Is it because they remember that if we forget that we are animals we become brutes? Perhaps they would rather die with the earth instead of becoming like those who got civilized and killed the earth?
Instead, they roam their ranges, follow the water, and forage for food. Perhaps their lives look hard to us. But that, too, may be a sign of all that we have forgotten. And all that they have not.
Thoughts I had while waiting for a bus that never came
First Thought:
“Is there a triangle in this sentence?”
Second Thought:
What is this?
Third Thought:
What is this?
Commentary
I encourage you all to come up with your own answers before reading what follows.
First Thought:
It seems to me that whether or not a triangle is contained in the sentence quoted, depends upon what a triangle is and if a triangle is and what the relation is between this supposed triangle and the name given to it (i.e. “triangle”). If a triangle is something that exists outside of language and apart from the name we give to it (does anything exist outside of language? How can we talk about it then? And if we can’t talk about it, how can we know it?), then one could argue that there is no triangle contained within the sentence. But is a triangle divorced from the name “triangle” still a triangle? If it is not then the name “triangle” itself contains or is a triangle, in which case there is a triangle in the sentence.
Second thought:
I came up with the following although I’m sure answer could be multiplied endlessly:
- A tetrahedron;
- Four triangles;
- A quadrilateral divided into four uneven parts;
- A quadrilateral divided in half;
- A symbol;
- A shape;
- A thing;
- The representation of something else;
- No( )thing;
- An empty signifier;
- Modern art;
- Not a pipe.
Third Thought:
- Me;
- A picture of me;
- A simulacrum;
- A series of tiny coloured dots displayed on a computer monitor;
- A singularity;
- One in a series;
- A multitude;
- The same thing as that explored in the Second Thought above;
- Something different than that explored in the Second Thought above;
- A stunningly attractive and intelligent young man;
- All of the above;
- None of the above.
And you all? What answers did you give to these questions?
The Pianist (A Fairy Tale)
I’ve seen her at the pub before. She is young, especially for a place like this, and one of the first things most any fellow would notice about her is how full her lips are. Generally she is sitting at the bar drinking with an older fellow – not the same older fellow – but different men who look almost but not quite old enough to be her father.
She doesn’t smile very much. Her posture and her expressions remind me of the way a person drinks at a work function.
Another gal I used to drink with at this pub once told me that she is a sex worker who picks up clients here. Perhaps it is the formality with which she drinks that led to this conclusion… perhaps it is the ever changing older and far less attractive men around her.
I don’t know if this story is true. Maybe she’s just socially awkward and, let’s be honest, it’s pretty much only older folks who drink at this place so if a pretty young gal shows up here, there’s bound to be any number of daddies creeping on her. And, who knows, maybe the gal who told me this story was just feeling insecure or jealous of her beauty.
But, honestly, I don’t care either way. If a person chooses to be a sex worker, I reckon that’s no better or worse than choosing to be a social worker or a construction worker or any other kind of worker.
~
When she sits down beside me, I thought I had a pretty clear idea of where our conversation might go. We are both fairly drunk – her more than me, I think, as she keeps repeating the same questions or makes the same statements multiple times. She begins by telling me that she is a registered nurse but later states that she’s actually a nurse practitioner – it’s just most people don’t understand what a nurse practitioner is, so it’s easier to say she’s an RN. On weekends, she goes to Toronto and is a “Bud Girl” at special events. She does a mock performance of how she gets the fellas to buy beer from her. She is quick to call me “honey”. Mostly, I only like it when the older servers at the bar call me that. They’ve spent a lifetime waiting tables, dealing with drunks, putting up with pricks and I reckon they can get away with calling people “dear” or “honey” or “sweetie.” Whenever the younger servers pull that on me, I feel like they’re trying too hard. Let’s not get carried away, okay?
But she calls me “honey” and she touches my arm a lot when she talks to me. She asks me if I’m single and I say that I am. She asks me why and I am honest and say that most everybody I meet bores me – I don’t really give a fuck about hearing somebody talking about her favourite TV shows or her favourite kind of music or the fact that she really digs guys who can make her laugh. Wow! Who knew? God, what a bore. She says she understands and feels exactly the same way about the guys she has met since moving to Ontario when she was twenty-four. That was three years ago – she came here from B.C. – and started a new life for herself.
I don’t mention that I’ve already decided that she is boring, too.
~
She gets excited when she learns that I play piano and have a keyboard. Turns out she is a classically trained musician – piano and vocals. She asks if I have all eighty-eight keys and if they are pressure sensitive. It is imperative that they be pressure sensitive. I say that they are but that I don’t have a full range. She asks if I have drinks at my place and if I like to party. I mention I have drinks but I don’t party much these days. But, hey, I don’t care if she indulges.
~
She asks about going back to my place.
I say okay.
Getting into her car she says, “But we’re just doing this as friends, right? This is just a friends thing, okay?”
I say okay.
~
My place is a bit of a mess from having kids for the last four days. I tidy up quickly and mix a drink for her as she settles at the keyboard. She plays some songs from memory and some songs from sheets that I have. I play a few songs and she sings in the background. She has a decent voice but she is an exceptional piano player. When I play, she pauses to powder her nose… a few times. And then she plays one of the most beautiful renditions of the Moonlight Sonata that I have ever heard.
When she finishes, she says thank you very much and, gosh, it’s hot in here, and I escort her to her car and say goodnight. I smoke a final cigarette out back after she drives away and then I go to bed.
~
A friend tells me I should be looking to get laid. She points out that the mock profiles I set up on an online dating site – one to see if I could get rid of an old toaster, one pretending to be a total D&D nerd dressed up like a banana, and one pretending to be a circus bear – aren’t actually very conducive to meeting people and she reminds me that, really, I should be more serious about dating or at least picking people up. She says it’ll make things easier.
I’m not so sure. The story of lonely people meeting in bars and going home to lose themselves in the embrace of strangers seems a little overplayed. I met a girl at a pub. She came home with me and played my piano and then she left. I never touched her once. And, that, I think, made this whole encounter much less boring than I thought it was going to be. I was laughing to myself about it as I fell asleep.
~
I hope I don’t ever see her again.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Taught My Kids to Love the Energy Company
It’s raining sunshine!
1. Down the Rabbit Hole
If you want to surprise yourself after you watch “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” ask this question: who is the protagonist in this story and who is the antagonist? In other words, who is the good guy and who is the bad guy? (And, yes, they are both guys.)
Once you ask this question you realize something surprising: the person you might otherwise imagine to be the bad guy — Flint Lockwood, who almost destroys the entire world — is actually the protagonist. He’s the fellow we’ve been rooting for. If that’s the case, who is the bad guy? The Mayor. Of course, we are groomed from the beginning to root for Flint and to dislike the Mayor — Flint has a backs story and we first meet him as a wide-and-starry-eyed child who is bullied by his peers but loved by his mother (who dies while he is young, leaving him with a gruff but loving father who doesn’t know how to communicate or connect with his boy). Unlike Flint, the Mayor has no back story — I didn’t even know that he had a name until I looked the movie up on IMDB.
Flint = good; Mayor = bad. Everything unfolds from this. And down the rabbit hole we go…
2. Friends and Enemies and You
Who or what is Flint Lockwood? Well, we know he is something of a dreamer and an inventor. He is a bit nerdy, sometimes a bit misguided, but always well-intentioned. After a number of failed efforts, he does something of great significance: he invents a machine that causes it to rain food, thereby revitalizing the economy of a town that was dying and creating access to a resource that was quite limited (previously, the folks in Flint’s town lived off of sardines). Food, of course, provides people with energy — Flint is an energy provider.
However, Flint’s method of resource extraction ends up producing some less-than-ideal results. The amount of waste produced is staggering and, although everyone ignores it (Flint invents a machine called “The OutOfSighter” to catapult the waste out of sight and out of mind), it piles up on the horizon and threatens to tumble down and annihilate the town. As if that’s not bad enough, the mass production of this resource also results in an environmental disaster that threatens to destroy the entire planet.
Does this story sound familiar to anybody? It should. Flint isn’t just any energy provider, he’s Big Oil.
An early sketch of Flint Lockwood’s character.
So, if that’s who Flint is, who is the Mayor? Well, let’s look at the way he speaks about himself in the first behind the scenes shot we have of him:
This hellhole is too small for me, Brent. I wanna be big. I want people to look at me and say, “That is one big mayor.” And that’s why this has to work. It has to work. Otherwise, I’m just a tiny mayor of a tiny town full of tiny sardine-sucking knuckle-scrapers.
Of course, the mayor very quickly does become big… very big.
Before
After
So the oil company is the good guy and the Mayor is the bad guy and the bad guy wants to be big… do I really need to explain this? The antagonist in this film is big government. Yes, you see, the problems arise because the government wants to exploit the kindly, good-hearted but somewhat naive energy producer in order to gain wealth and status. Flint just wants to make everybody’s lives better — the Mayor wants to be big. Because of this the Mayor pushes Flint to do things he would not do otherwise. Flint realizes that things are getting somewhat out of control and dangerous and wants to pull the plug — but the Mayor talks him out of it and then, when that fails, the Mayor breaks Flint’s machine to prevent him from pulling the plug. Then, when disaster strikes, the Mayor abandons the town to try and make his own escape at the expense of others. Big government is not your friend.
But there is another enemy lurking here, somebody else who is to blame for all of this. Who is this hidden enemy who also helps to drive the world to the brink of destruction? You. You see, if you weren’t demanding that the energy provider continually flood the market with more and more and more, everything would have been just fine. The energy provider was ever only trying to make you happy. After all, unlike the Mayor, Flint was never motivated by a desire for wealth, or power or status. Sure, he wanted to be loved by others (who doesn’t?) and maybe that blinded him a little, but isn’t that true of all of us?
3. Vindication and Salvation
All of this is beautifully explained in a speech that the police officer, Earl, makes to the townspeople when they are intent on lynching Flint because they blame him for the disaster. As they rock Flint’s car back and forth, Earl jumps in to restore order and says:
This mess we’re in is all our faults. Me, I didn’t even protect my own son. Look, I’m as mad at Flint as you are. In fact, when he gets out of that car, I’m gonna slap him in the face. I know Flint Lockwood made the food, but it was made-to-order. And now it’s time for all of us to pay the bill.
So, you see, BP, TransCanada, Keystone XL, Imperial Oil, none of them are to blame for any of this mess. We are. If the oil companies are guilty of anything it’s of trying too hard to make us happy and to be loved by us.
This is all your fault.
Notice, also, that it is a police officer making this speech in the movie. Earl is the representative of the rule of law in this film, and the law vindicates Flint. Sure, he may deserve a slap… but even that is barely enacted, and Earl quickly apologizes to Flint for slapping him (but, don’t worry, Flint is such a nice guy that he responds by saying, “That’s okay”!). So, really, the law punishes the energy provider more to placate the people than to serve justice (and, of course, out of love for the people, the energy provider goes along with it… just like good ol’ Tony Hayward who pretty much died for our sins).
Not only does the law vindicate Flint but it is right to do so — for Flint is the one who ends up saving everybody in the end. How does he do this? With further technological advances. Specifically, he invents a flying car that permits him to gain access to the machine in the sky that has gone haywire so that he can prevent a catastrophe.
That he uses a flying car is significant — aren’t flying cars the symbol of a future when technology has produced a wonderful world for us wherein anything is possible and all our problems have been solved? The solution, then, is not to abandon any of our technological advances but to trust in technology to miraculously save us from an impending disaster that appears to be unavoidable and catastrophic. If this also sounds like a familiar story it should — the oil companies have been saying the same thing to us for years about climate change.
4. Conclusion: Stop Worrying…
All told, the message here is this: any environmental catastrophe we are experiencing was produced by self-serving politicians and greedy consumers exploiting well-intentioned energy providers. The solution, then, is to not cast stones, except at big government, and wait for BP to save us, just like Flint saves the townspeople in the film.
So, really, if this is anything to go on (and anybody with children should break out in a sweat from 3:10-3:40, although the previous minutes provide the necessary context for that segment), by watching this movie I’ve been preparing my child to view the world in a certain way — a way that favours the narrative of the oil giants and a way that brackets out other narratives. This is how I’ve been teaching Charlie to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Books of 2012 (2/3)
So looks like my two part series, turned into a three part series… sorry for the brevity of some of these (that’s what I get for doing this all at once at the end of the year instead of monthly)…
19. Germinal by Émile Zola.
Germinal has been on my books to read list for a long time. I’m very glad that I sat down and read it this year. It was a really phenomenal narrative exploring matters related to class, industrialization, the rise of the capitalists, and the crushing of the proletariat in France. Characters from various classes (from the owners to the miners) are presented as having depth and complexity and are not caricatured or presented as “bad guys/gals” vs. “good guys/gals”. I highly recommend this book — it was one of my favourites this year.
As I was reading it, I was struck by the absence of this kind of literature in the contemporary scene. Folks like Franzen and Wallace are (or were) writing really good books but this whole struggle with matters related to class, not to mention matters related to justice and inequalities regarding class, labour, wealth, and the distribution of goods, seems to be completely missing from our stories. I wish somebody would write a book like this rooted in the present day. Regardless, this is really highly recommended reading and reminded my as to why I fell in love with 19th century literature in the first place (think I may go reread some Hugo now).
20. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene.
I joined a book club when I moved to London and this was the book they were reading when I joined. It is the tale of a few small town gangsters in a British resort town back in the 1930s. It was a fun read although I didn’t feel that it had the depth of character and plot that I found in The Power and the Glory (although it has been some years since I read that book, so I might be wrong there). There were a few things I found fairly interesting though.
First, the ways in which the villains are caught up in the social imaginary and moralism of Roman Catholicism, whereas the woman who represents justice (Ida), has shed that moral system. The mobster kill people are are convinced they are going to hell. Ida drinks and fucks her way to justice — even, it should be noted, if that ends up being costly to other people along the way (Lady Justice, standing blindfolded with her sword and scales came to mind more than once).
Secondly, I found it interesting how the most ruthless mobster was always contemplating his damnation and the possibility of redemption or forgiveness (which he seemed to desperately desire, even though he repeatedly stated that this was out of his reach). In this regard, he kept thinking about an old saying that if a person repents in the split second when they are dying (in the time it takes from them to fall “from the stirrup to the ground”) then that person will be saved. Now this is interesting because when another gang tries to kill Pinkie he is so distracted and shocked that he doesn’t even think about repenting. This terrifies him. However at the end [SPOILER about to happen!] when he falls from the cliff something funny happens — those who were there remark that they never hear a splash… as though he were simply lifted out of existence. Keeping in mind the remarks about finding salvation while falling, I like how Greene leaves this open to the possibility of Pinkie being saved.
Thirdly, as another possible interpretation of this last point, I was struck by how some of the characters involved in the gang thought that they were already living in hell (i.e. — we’re not going to hell, we’re already there, baby). What if this is actually true and “Brighton Rock” is Greene’s vision, not so much of hell but (since he was a Catholic) of purgatory? Then, there is no splash when Pinkie falls because, having done is time and repented, he is lifted out of purgatory? This is a bit of a stretch, but it’s fun to play with the text in this way.
21. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
I have read various political essays Roy has written (mostly about Maoism and revolution in contemporary India) and so I was happy to finally get around to this Booker Prize winner this year (my wife had been telling me I should read it for years). I enjoyed her voice and the ways in which themes of family, and class, and communism, and caste where woven together with a little magic and a lot of tragedy thrown in. It was pretty and sad… but just seemed to be missing the certain something that would push it from going “good” to being “exceptional.” I don’t know… maybe I was flying high from reading Wallace and Zola and so I was in the wrong head space to get the most I could have from this book.
22. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.
Prior to reading this book (the second one selected by my book club since I joined), I didn’t know anything about Ned Kelly or his time as an outlaw in the Australian outback. Seems like a pretty interesting character and something of a Robin Hood/Jesse James kind of figure in Australia (and if you want to read a letter written by Ned and his gang, see here). It was a fun story to read and Carey did a good job in inhabiting the character of Kelly in order to tell it (even though, it should be noted, that means we may not always want to believe the claims made by the narrator). I enjoyed the ways in which matters of race, poverty, religion, resistance and violence where woven together.
It’s funny — we can look at gangsters or outlaws or criminals or fugitives from different eras of history and we can actually view them sympathetically or even as heroes or, at the very least, recognize that they acted nobly given their circumstances. Yet we are completely blind to this kind of reading of criminals or fugitives or “terrorists” in our context. Shit, I mean we have a First Nations chief who is on her third week of a hunger strike here in Canada because of the Canadian government’s consistent practice of violence, law-breaking, treaty-breaking, and genocide against her people and she is the one settler society is calling an “extremist” and “terrorist.” That doesn’t make much sense to me but, then again, Ned Kelly, Robin Hood, and Jesse James were all white men so maybe that makes a big difference.
23. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe.
I was recently looking over my list of “Books that I have read” I noticed a LOT of gaps in my reading (actually, it’s a bit embarrassing to have that list posted because of the massive gaps in pretty much every area, but I don’t mind a little embarrassment). One of the gaps I noticed in my reading is the absence of literature from outside of North America and Europe. I’m intending to work towards rectifying that so I picked up this book by Achebe late in the year.
I found it to be enjoyable and it was good to read a narrative exploring colonialism, the spread of Christianity in Africa, and traditional ways of structuring life together in parts of Africa, that come from the perspective of an African author. A pleasant and quick read.
24. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace.
So, you would think about book filled with technical tax information and terminology, telling the stories of workers at an IRS office would be boring as hell but, hey, you would be wrong! This book was well on it’s way to being one of my favourite books ever before it’s rather abrupt termination (Wallace killed himself before he completed the manuscript… I thought it was further along than it was when I picked it up, so I was really pretty sad that we don’t get to see the story and the threads come together [or not] in a manner comparable to “Infinite Jest”).
I really love Wallace’s voice. It is hypnotic and it was that, sometimes more than the plot or the characters, that pulled in through “Infinite Jest” (in the same way that Proust’s voice pulled me through “In Search of Lost Time”). However, I think Wallace’s writing got better with this story. There were points where I laughed out loud several times in a single chapter and I pretty much never do this when reading (even when reading things I find funny, I usually just smile or laugh in my mind but not out loud). It was really a delight to read and a major disappointment that it ended where it did.
Although, you know, given the way that “Infinite Jest” ended (i.e. by leaving the plot threads pointing towards one another and a certain conclusion but not actually completing the story and leaving it to the reader to work out that conclusion on his or he own), maybe this was part of Wallace’s intention. Instead of an “infinite” story (which one could read in a loop forever) one has a permanent rupture and the literal death of the author. In this situation, what is the role of the reader?
25. I Am a Memory Come Alive: Autobiographical Writings by Franz Kafka (edited by Nahum N. Glazer).
I remember a writer once saying that she would always disappoint her fans when they sought her out to discover more, to dig deeper into the the depths out of which she drew her stories, to find further answers to their questions, and all that. She stated something like this: “the best of me, the very best part of me, are those stories. There is nothing deeper behind them or greater beyond them — they are the best I have to give.” I’ve often thought of that quotation when learning about authors and scholars. It’s a good quote to keep in mind when coming to Kafka because, shoot, reading these autobiographical writings made me think, “Man, what a miserable prick” (and then made me note to my self that I should post less autobiographical material!).
26. Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics by Bill Richardson.
This was a fun little book to read on the side when I felt like being distracted from more serious things. Richardson, a CBC radio personality, traveled across Canada and dug into the archives and folk tales in order to dig up stories of various eccentrics from across Canada. It was fun to read but not spectacular (although the bushman who lived in the middle of nowhere and, at one point, cut off his own hand and healed and survived on his own without medication was pretty spectacular). A lot of the “eccentrics” where fellows who like wearing dresses or were gay before such things were what they are today.
I was struck by the ways in which small communities back in the day used to accept these so-called “eccentrics.” Yeah, so Timmy likes to wear dresses and he’ll steal your buttons, and maybe sneak into your kitchen, and steal some of your wife’s clothing off the line if he gets a chance… but that’s just Timmy, he’s a part of our community, he don’t mean no harm, and we look after him, I suppose. That sort of care and understanding seemed pretty common.
The same point was pretty strongly made in a documentary I recently watched called “Brother’s Keeper” about four brothers who are illiterate, may have other developmental or psychosocial barriers, and sleep in a tiny shack together (one brother is accused of murdering another brother and this is the central drama driving the documentary). Along the ways, it turns out that the brothers all share a bed together and there are rumours that they have sexual relations with each other. Based on our perceptions of tiny, rural, poverty-stricken communities in the United States, one would expect the brothers to be ostracized and vilified because of this… but the local people actually are very accepting of the brothers and very non-judgmental — “How’s it my business what goes on in there home?” and that sort of thing.
A third time I came across this point was reading Venturi’s “Roots of Revolution,” about the history of social and populist movements in 19th century Russia. I was reminded of how socialist and anarchist-based groups, back in the 1860s in Russia, where already adamantly proclaiming the equality of women and the equality of people of all races.
This made me rethink the story that contemporary urban, Western, liberal society tells itself about itself — i.e. that we are a recently new and improved phenomenon wherein queer people, people who are differently-abled, women, different races, and “eccentrics” are all accepted as equals. I’m still thinking through what the implications of this might be and have a few ideas… but that’s probably the subject of another post, if I ever get around to writing.
27. Lost Dogs by Jeff Lemire.
I really enjoyed Lemire’s Essex County Trilogy — it is amongst my favourite graphic novels — so it was fun to come across this earlier work. It is a poignant and sad story, with a lot of violence, few words, and no redemption. Not as good as Essex County but I really like the way in which Lemire is able to communicate so much in rough broad stroke pictures and little use of language.
Books of 2012 (Part 1/3)
Usually, I post reviews of the books I have read each month on the month in which I read them, but this year I got a bit behind, then a lot behind… by the time I actually started writing the reviews, I kept adding more to the list before I finished reviewing what I had already read. So, the end result of this was that all my book reviews got bumped to the end of the year. That means that my already too short, too personal, and too idiosyncratic reviews may be even worse than usual. I’m okay with that. I was originally planning on organizing these into categories (philosophy, fiction, history, etc.) but have just decided to post them as I complete them. Here is part one.
1. Empire in the New Testament ed. by Stanley Porter and Cynthia Long Westfall.
Many thanks to Christian at Wipf and Stock for this review copy.
This collection of essays comes out of a conference that was at MacMaster Divinity School. The first two essays lay some of the foundation for an imperially-nuanced reading of the New Testament by looking at matters related to empire in the Davidic literature and in Isaiah. We then have three essays dealing with material from the Gospels, two essays dealing with the Pauline and deutero-Pauline material, one essay dealing with the non-Pauline epistles, and one concluding essay looking at the ways in which the Church Fathers interacted with the traditions they inherited (from both the Jesus Movement and the Roman Empire). Notably absent from any of this is any comment on Acts. I found this disappointing as I think some of the most exciting work has yet to be done in relation to Acts. Pair that with the observation that some of the essays collected here were a much higher quality than others (I found the essay on Isaiah to be repetitive and dull and the essay by Warren Carter was essentially restating things he has written elsewhere) so this felt like a missed opportunity to me.
For the sake of brevity, I would like to single out two essays: Tom Thatcher’s piece about Jesus’ crucifixion as it is presented in John’s Gospel and Gord Heath’s article about the Church Fathers and their relation to the Roman Empire (aside: about ten years ago I played in a floor hockey tournament with Gord Heath; we used to call him “short shorts” because of the clothes he wore during games).
I want to begin with the Thatcher essay because I think it was one of the strongest in this collection (maybe actually the strongest). What he does is engage in a reading of the crucifixion of Jesus that draws attention to the ways in which crucifixion functioned within the ideology of Roman imperialism. Crucifixion enacts a certain kind of drama that communicates a certain kind of message — about the gods, about Rome, about conquered peoples, about justice and salvation — and Thatcher spends a fair bit of time drawing this out. He does this very well (Brigitte Kahl does something similar in Galatians Re-Imagined, so it’s good to see this kind of reading gaining some traction — it is very compelling). Thatcher then argues that the Gospel of John recasts the crucifixion of Jesus so as to create what Foucault has called a “countermemory” in order to still affirm the ideological importance of this crucifixion — along with the whole cluster of themes related to it — but in subversive manner that reveals a surprising reversal: the crucifixion of Jesus reveals God’s conquest of the Roman Empire. I really recommend this essay. I think the perspective being provided by people like Thatcher and Kahl is crucial for understanding the cross of Jesus and, I dare say, the development of a Christian soteriology.
Gord Heath’s article deserves comment because it strikes me as a good example scholarship that is intelligent but shockingly acritical. A good deal of conservative or reformist scholarship seems to exhibit these seemingly contradictory traits — on the one hand you have somebody who is obviously intelligent and capable of scholarly work but, on the other hand, the same person seems to be unable to step back from the material and has the most basic critical questions. In relation to Heath’s essay this plays out in the following ways:
Heath spends a fair bit of time highlighting and developing the complexities related to the ways in which various Church Fathers interacted with the Roman Empire in light of the traditions they had inherited from the New Testament and the early Jesus Movement. His emphasis tended to fall on those voices that were more sympathetic to the empire (compare this, for example, to the more developed arguments of Justo Gonzalez in Faith and Wealth — an important work lacking from Heath’s bibliography — where a whole different emphasis comes to light). Ultimately, he concludes that most were quite sympathetic to and supportive of the empire, apart from its ever-present violence and idolary (which, I believe, Heath only understands in the most obvious and superficial manner and which he does not seem to relate to some of the other areas where violence and idolatry operate — areas that have been highlighted by social theorists and philosophers who work in the domain of “postmodernism” that Heath rejects and, not surprisingly, misunderstands).
Hence, on the one hand, we see Heath acting as an historian should (dealing with primary source material… even if he is a little selective with it… who isn’t, right?). But, on the other hand, we see him dismissing major scholarly endeavours without any critical engagement. Heath can’t imagine any reason why the early Jesus followers would be anti-empire — and his “hunch” is that the early Jesus followers would better understand the “relative benefits of Roman rule” — and so he concludes that counter-imperial readings of the New Testament are simply grounded an assumption made by the interpeters who favour this reading: the New Testament is said to be counter-imperial because the interpreters are counter-imperial.
Of course, Heath is open to being faced with the same charge since he concludes that we are to act the same way today as he says the Church Fathers acted. After all, he concludes his essay with these words: “They were good citizens, appreciative of the empire, and loyal to the emperor, but never completely a part of the empire, for their ultimate loyalty lay elsewhere (much to the chagrin of the imperial authorities). This was the tension then, as it is today.” But I think this just shows the vacuity of the charge he is making — if you’re going to dismiss a position simply because you believe the conclusions that are drawn support or are supported by the values of the person drawing those conclusions then you can dismiss almost everything that has ever been said.
That said, one more remark on the Church Fathers. I find it interesting that so much focus has come upon the Church Fathers amongst Conservative or Evangelical scholars in the last decade or so (at least that’s my impression). It seems as though they have gained something akin to canonical status in some circles. Especially when it comes to interpreting the New Testament. I find this troubling. I believe that, in many ways, the Church Fathers betrayed the values we find in the New Testament (perhaps not even consciously for they came from a long line of people who were vying for power and control over the early Jesus Movement and we already see the seeds of this betrayal in the Pastoral Epistles or in the parties with whom Paul is struggling in Corinth). Many of the Church Fathers are simply those who were most successful in gaining power of the Jesus Movement, gain the more powerful imperial patrons, killing or silencing their enemies (the “heretics”), and so on. Why we would want to privilege them to the extent that many do is beyond me. So sure, some Church Fathers wanted to be good citizens and appreciated the Roman Empire (as they had moved well away from the call of Jesus and Paul and were already well situated in places of power), but why we should see that as a model for our own actions — or as the lens through which we should interpret Jesus and Paul — is beyond me. This is the case, not simply because I find that model unappealing, but also because I believe a good historian should take these kind of things into consideration.
2. Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers by Mark Cronlund Anderson and Carmen L. Robertson.
This book is a very good study of the ways in which First Nations peoples have been presented in the mainstream Canadian media over the last 120 or so years. What becomes markedly apparent is the ways in which the mainstream media presents a vision of Canada and of First Nations peoples that is deeply entrenched in the mythical narratives of colonialism. The media both recycles racist white, colonial representations of both settlers and indigenous peoples, and further entrenches those portrayals within the social imaginary of Canadians. This study shows just how deeply colonialism is embedded into the core of Canada and being Canadian (therefore, recalling a somewhat distant — in internet time — conversation with a fellow at at Conservative blog, I would assert that the history of Canada’s relationship with Native peoples does indeed have “some sort of controlling relationship over the whole of Canadian action” [see here if you want]). Of course, the problem is that the general public remains indoctrinated by the sort of thinking exemplified by the Canadian media and refuses to see a need to educate themselves further on this matter. Hence, any assertions that challenge the dominant ideology tend to fall on deaf ears.
I’ve been thinking about this problem more since moving to a small predominantly white industrial city that relies upon jobs in plants that are poisoning the local First Nations community (and the town, too, although people don’t really talk about that). I’ve tried to take the advice of Taiaiake Alfred seriously (who follows Malcolm X in suggesting that well-meaning white people stick to trying to educate and change other white people [if, that is, they are unwilling to assassinate the Minster of Aboriginal Affairs and Nothern Development, although I think he was joking about that]). I’ve had many conversations at the bar with different people about matters related to the First Nations community here and nobody sees the problem and actually gets offended by what I say — charging me with “reverse racism” and a rude for of “exclusivity” and so on. I’ve tried to present the broader picture and issues and so on, but all this falls on deaf ears. I’m not sure how to better go about having these conversations but any suggestions are welcome.
Anyway, this is a really good book. Recommended readings for any other living in these occupied territories.
3. Being and Time by Martin Heidegger.
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Fast with Theresa Spence
Today I am fasting in solidarity with Theresa Spence.
I am a settler and the descendent of settlers who first came to Turtle Island from Europe in the early and mid-twentieth century but I know that my liberation is tied to the liberation of the First Nations people. As such, Spence’s hunger strike holds out the possibility of life and freedom to me and other settlers even though the explicit focus of her strike is the life and freedom of First Nations people.
How can this be?
In the context of colonialism and oppression, all parties are dehumanized. The colonizer (the oppressor) is dehumanized because he or she lives a life stained with the blood of others, benefits from goods stolen from others, and experiences privileges that are premised upon the denial of the rights of others. Consequently, to live as a colonizer is, in my opinion, to live a less-than-fully-human-life. This is the case, even if a person is kind or sensitive or knowledgeable – even if a colonizer (like me) claims to care about all people equally regardless of their race or origin, that colonizer still participates within and benefits from racist systems and structures. That, as far as I can tell, is the reality of the world into which I was born. As a settler living within a nation that is premised upon theft, colonialism, and genocide, the reality of my situation is one of bondage. I am bound by a nation, a culture, a law, that are all structured in such a way as to refuse me the ability to be just or nonviolent.
Consequently, the actions of Spence and others who are proclaiming that they will be idle no more are actually actions that hold the potential to liberate me from this context which dehumanizes me.
And yet I wish to pause here – once again I discover a situation where settlers are exploiting the First Nations people. My people are those who have created this situation – my people are those who have stolen the land, resources, health, children, cultures, languages, and lives of many Onkwehonwe – yet now it is the Onkwehonwe who are acting to rectify the situation. I am a member of those who created this context of oppression and genocide and now I stand to benefit from the sacrifices made by those like Spence? Once again, it will be First Nations people who struggle and suffer and I, as a settler, will benefit from their struggle if it is successful.
How, then, can I begin to engage more directly and appropriately in a process that pursues the transformation of our context by means of a mutually liberating solidarity? It does not seem right to me that First Nations people should be the ones choosing to starve themselves to death (if need be) when they have already had so much violence imposed upon their bodies by settler society. Shouldn’t it be settlers who are now offering to starve themselves to death in solidarity with the Onkwehonwe? Isn’t it time that settlers began to pay, with their bodies, something of the price for liberation and for creating a more just way of sharing life together?
These are the questions I ask myself and I share them with you because I do not know the answers and I do not know the way forward. I have been grasping and fumbling and trying and failing to find my way.
However, today I will fast in solidarity with Spence because this request has been made and I wish to honour those who are asking it. Yet having said that, I also want to be conscious that true solidarity requires much more than symbolic actions performed sporadically. I know that my hands are not washed clean of the blood of others by engaging in this fast. Just as attending an anti-war protest does not make me a peaceful person (for I still pay taxes that are used to fund war in Afghanistan and elsewhere), so I know that this symbolic action does not decolonize me or make me less implicated in the violence of settler society. I know that much more needs to be done. I cannot forget the words of Che Guevara:
Solidarity is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing her fate; one must accompany her to her death or to victory.
Hard words, indeed, but true. There is a long road to walk to freedom, and I cannot see well to find my way… but today I will fast and bring the name of Theresa Spence to the Creator.
I will also ask the Creator for patience when dealing with my own people. I have tried to heed the words of Taiaiake Alfred who, echoing Malcolm X, has encouraged well-meaning white folks to go back to their own people to confront the racism and violence that exists there. I have tried to do this and have had little success – I think perhaps I get angry too easily and I am unable to sway those with whom I speak. I will confess my inability to act or speak well and I will ask the Creator for guidance on this road.
Thank you for reading. Creator, may this day be good.
KCCO
[Warning: the images below contain very graphic depictions of violence and death. Welcome to the world in which we live.]
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Pieta
(The words are from the song “Living Life” by Daniel Johnston — “Hold me like a mother would / Life I’ve always known somebody should.” I like this cover by The Eels.)